The invention relates to flashlamp pumped dye lasers, and more particularly to a power supply configuration for achieving double pulsed operation.
Flashlamp pumped dye lasers are a well known class of lasers. The flashlamp pumped dye laser includes a charge power supply to charge a capacitor which is discharged in order to create the pulse needed to provide pulsed laser operation. The power supply conventionally provides a single pulse, there being a relatively long time interval required in order to provide another pulse.
There are, however, some application that require a pair of closely occurring laser pulses. One such application is that of Laser Identification of Friend or Foe (IFF). This application requires two laser pulses spaced apart by a minimum of 50 milliseconds to a maximum of 125 milliseconds. Simple modification of the conventional charge power supply, e.g., charging two capacitors and then discharging the capacitors with a time interval between them to provide two pulses, does not solve the problem. For example, the capacitors would be charged with the power supply, and the laser would be fired by discharging the first capacitor with the usual high voltage trigger pulse on the flashlamp. After delaying to separate the pulses, the laser could be fired again by somehow discharging the second capacitor through some combination of SCR and the high voltage trigger pulse on the flashlamp. The problem with triggering the second pulse is that if the power supply is used only in the conventional manner to charge the capacitors, the SCR would have to be triggered at exactly the same time as when the high voltage trigger pulse ionizes the gas in the flashlamp. This would create a very difficult timing problem between triggering the SCR and the high voltage trigger pulse ionizing the gas in the flashlamp. A further disadvantage is that a flashlamp trigger pulse is required to produce each laser pulse, since the flashlamp life is very dependent on the number of high voltage trigger pulses which have been applied.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a double pulsed flashlamp pumped dye laser.
A further object is to provide a double pulsed flashlamp pumped laser which requires only a single flashlamp trigger in order to obtain the two closely spaced pulses.